poor balance can be intereting but not when the weapons are weaker than water
Not entirely true. People complained about having a ball on their team “throwing” for the longest time. Much like the same complaints when they have a sym/torb/bastion on their team. It wasn’t until every other tank option got nerfed into the ground that ball became seen and accepted as the least bad tank, and then subsequently nerfed because he’s not allowed to be the best tank.
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The issue is, ANYTHING that becomes the most popular gets complaints. Take McCree, who is the latest target of the forums. Or Genji, when he got his buffs and became super popular. Or Zarya, whenever she ends up meta.
You honestly can’t name a single hero that doesn’t get blasted on the forums for being popular. The entire tank roster, certainly, does. So people saying “Ball is unhealthy because people complain about him” isn’t good logic. People complain about ANYTHING that is popular.
Even your example shows flaws. Mass Rez was never really an issue until Mercy was given immortality frames on it, at which point, she got super popular again (surprise surprise).
You can call anything problematic. Saying it has a net negative because people don’t like playing against it is faulty; people hate playing against anything that kills/disables them. And trust me, whatever is FOTM is going to be complained against as OP, unfun, toxic, etc.
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hotter take…the balance has never been that poor:
A) it has limits on what it can be
B) cant please anyone anyway
C) people are so indoctrined into “meta or lose” that even if it was “great” it would still seem terrible anyway
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I’ll agree with you, aside from a few specific hero releases which were incredibly OP at the time of release =)
Other than that, though, yeah, balance has never really been the issue. The pursuit of great balance has killed gameplay and that’s the real problem.
As I said, people complain about problems that are in their face. If they complain about every hero they’re frequently seeing, then the fact that heroes are fun/unfun is just a symptom of the problem, not the root.
Lucio has been popular basically forever and I rarely see complaints about him.
Firstly, that’s not what I said. Secondly: People play games for fun. If enough people have their fun negatively impacted strongly enough by a particular thing, that thing is arguably unhealthy for the game.
That’s debatable. The issue was never that Mercy was able to mass rez and get away with it, it was the effect that such an ability had on the game. Mercy players were just hiding, not healing/boosting anyone so they wouldn’t be located. They’d let their whole team die with the hope that the team had killed one or two enemies, so that when they came in for the glory rez their team would have the numbers advantage. There’s many problems with this scenario which were resolved by removing mass rez and all it cost was the ire of Mercy players. Not even all Mercy players, either, just the ones who abused rez cheesing.
Brig was even worse. She was undeniably busted at launch. She singlehandedly ruined the game for flankers AND tanks (remember when she could bash through shields? lol). She was legitimately killing the game as a whole (some would argue that she succeeded) and absolutely HAD to be changed, regardless of how fun she was.
Obviously I’m using extreme examples here, but that’s just to drive the point home. Some features, while fun for a few, are decidedly unfun for many. They need to be changed. If the result is then unfun for the few, then that suggests that either the change was the wrong one or that the real problem lies elsewhere.
People hate being killed in this game because the effects of getting killed (even if it happens to a teammate) are so prominent. I’ve played few games which punish death as hard as this one does. Even Diablo 3’s hardcore mode, where you literally lose more the longer you’ve played, feels less punishing to die in than this game, no joke.
Because of this, people’s frustration with cheesy deaths is amplified. THIS is the problem. It’s not that “problematic” heroes get nerfed to be unfun, it’s that problematic heroes exacerbate the deeply embedded design problems the game has under the surface.
I actually think that making them all fun to play in their own way is one of the game’s biggest strengths. The devs have done a great job here.
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But by buffing doom, you’re ruining the fun of the 6 people on the enemy team
I get your point, but some heroes are better off not being buffed
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The more CC a character has, the harder it is to buff them.
Exactly. The more you buff heroes with unpopular mechanics like CC, burst damage, or so on, you will overall have less fun than more
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Overwatch is a Competitive game, which therefore automatically means that balance is valued more than fun.
And that’s really the correct way to go. Casual players won’t really bother as long as the pay styles they love are the same and the game still feels good to play. However, a tiny numerical change can cause havoc in Competitive environments, not vice - versa.
Hence why this is the devs’ priority. That and they also have the probably billion - dollar investment that is OWL to sustain.
Also, you realize that, in casual games, the fun of the majority of the player base plays the biggest role? This means that oppressive heroes (which are by definition frustrating to play against) and even frustrating heroes that aren’t statistically dominant would also be addressed via nerfs or reworks if the game were to be balanced casually. It would always be the players of a hero VS everyone else and needless to say who would rightfully win…
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I don’t really get why this has so many likes. The OP doesn’t really give us an actual alternative and just states a rather obvious thing. Balance is very finite right now and variety has been through the roof for over a year now. Balance hasn’t been a big issue in a very long time and the latest hit-scan nerfs solidified that state by bringing this type of DPS to where the rest of the DPS are, ignoring Tracer
But what’s the actual problem is also really obvious. The matchmaking is going haywire thanks to the game being so dead and there’s an abundance of alt accounts/smurfs because lots of them are dedicated high tiered veteran players which means that their segment in the playerbase has grown relatively when other segments of players have ended up quitting the game. There’s also a content drought in the game and some minor systematic flaws like Paris/HLC still being in QP pools and devastating players’ experiences there, endos are still irrelevant, automated reports are going haywire and stuff like that
But most of all the 2 biggest issues in the game right now are: Handicapped matchmaking making games unenjoyable before the games even start as the teams with highly varying players in it will have a miserable time regardless due to various reasons explained in all of the matchmaking related topics; and player behavior being worse than it ever has so that when you finally get that rare game where both teams are actually equal and there isn’t a massive difference between the best and the worst player in the match, the match ends up still being extremely skewed up because of heinous and bad player behavior where players don’t play the game properly for a win and instead tunnel vision forward as if they’re merely farming games for border xp or something dumb like that. Not to mention if you bump into alt accounts which also tend to engage way more in heinous behavior
When you combine those 2 issues it’s really hard for the players to find an even game with even teams where everyone plays properly for a win, even in competitive. And when you note that this is the pre-requisite for players to consistently enjoy the gameplay, is it any wonder that players tend to have a really bad time playing the game nowadays?
dva being more dps actually attract more people like dps player or any non tank player
only a few tank player are actually want to play a punching bag without a threat
Wait, do you think all tanks need buff(s) then? I mean, after all ball has risen a ton in popularity despite him still being in his extra nerfed state. It’s clearly because other tanks have been nerfed.
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Only risen in popularity on GM 1 week stats and nowhere else. He’s still a vastly unpopular hero across the ladder. But looking at the 1 week stats in GM I can already tell you the easy explanation. Doomfist and Genji look wildly OP and Ball is the tank that goes with them.
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I’m not saying he’s OP, and I do think he’s overrated, I’m just asking if you think other tank(s) need buff(s), if so, which ones?
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Tank balance is relative to itself. So if tanks across the board get nerfed then their power level remains the same… which is effectively what happened. That being said, I think Orisa could use a small bump as the game stands now. But quite frankly I wouldn’t mind if all tank nerfs were reverted to bring back goats level power. It would make tanks more fun to play and help queue times as well. Plus goats isn’t a thing with role queue anyway.
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I completely agree. Zarya is especially one I’d love to see reverted to that stage (mind you she’d need her beam bug fix reverted).
Mind you, how would sigma look? 1s barrier cd?
However, yes q times are a massive problem, and you are completely correct that tank balance is relative. Would love to see them back to that power level. They kinda feel bad rn.
1s barrier is probably best. 0s felt great but he was OP. 2s feels terrible. I hope the devs revert that.
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It think it’s overall a combination of many factors.
Usually when people go in the right path, even if some heroes are unbalanced, you’d see the ones that are balanced stay true to their design, even the ones who aren’t balanced.
In this game the devs just give random buffs and nerfs, expecting the hero to be balanced with enough nerfs/buffs which is the opposite of how you should balance things…
When aiming for buffs/nerfs you need to ask yourself.
- Why is the hero strong/weak in the first place? - Is it synergy? Is it a specific part of its kit? Is it lack of countering? Lack of things to counter? Is it its job?
- What would be the best way to fix it without harming the playstyle and fluidity of the hero? damage change? cast time? new hero? new feature? maybe even a rework? touching its floor/cielling skill?
- Why and where is the hero strong? High ranks? medium ranks? low ranks?
Not to mention the overall direction of the game btw is unclear… Some see it as a competetive fps, some see it as a strategy game, some see it as a casual ability based fps.
Too many directions…
There are many questions the devs clearly don’t ask themselves while balancing…
A hero can be fun AND balanced.
But it all depends on how well do you understand its problem.
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They can always play with other factors of the shield btw in order to keep it balanced.
Shields are already built to be best against medium-long range.
So one solution I personally like is when sending the shield, the shield starts 3 meters away from Sigma instead with 0 cool down on shield. It would be both good for Sigma as he would be able to block snipers and kiters more effectively but also good for countering it as heroes like Mei or Symmetra already play in close range.
Another big factor is that he already got kinetic grasp and its rock up close so he doesn’t need 3 different protection to help it in its weak range.
Just an example.
But overall I think the devs need first to look at what’s fun about the hero and then balance accordingly, keeping the important part the same.
If 0 seconds felt better but was op, then no reason not to try balance it from other aspects… Heroes should aim to be fluid AND balanced, not just one over another.